Cactus Thorns

When my Abuelo Corona died in the sixth grade, it was cold. His Rosary was set for Super Bowl Sunday, which in those days used to be in January. I remember hearing the news from my grandmother on my mother’s side. My grandfather, the last one I had - because, really, we only get two - was now meeting the other one in Heaven. I sat in bed for a little while to digest the news. It was strange, really. Only three grades ago I was at my grandfather’s (Mom’s dad) funeral. Now was the time to bury my father’s father.

I put on my scuffed shoes and went outside into the back yard, which is much different now. Up against a fence, rusted over, was a cactus patch. The thorns struck out like quills. With pluckers, I took a few out and stuffed in them in my shirt pocket. I brushed the cold soft earth from my knees and stared at the patch. They towered above me, the cacti. And they been allowed to live, they probably would have surpassed me in height forever. I pulled a thorn out and smelled it, making sure not to let the sharp part prick me any. After my brief inspection, I stuck it in my mouth and let it dangle there. It made me feel strong - why? I don’t know.

“Mijo,” his voice sounded familiar. He’d call me that all his life and would continue it to this very day. “Mijo.”

Most sons would rejoice over this. I didn’t. It felt strange and fake. I wasn’t his son more than I was anyone’s son other than my mother’s. She had been the one who raised me. Who taught me wrong from right. Who said men never run away. And yet, he did.

I turned on a heel and looked at him. My face had been puffy from crying earlier. My eyes reddened. I wasn’t  his son and he wasn’t my father, ‘apa, or whatever you want to call him. He was just the man who decided only to pop into my life whenever it convenience him. I spat the thorn from my mouth and allowed him to hug me. His clothing smelt of cigarettes and alcohol, father’s cologne. His hugs were awkward. There was hardly any emotion in them. His hands, used to sooth me by disheveling my hair, were rough and dry. Oil stained with crud in the finger tips. This, I believe, is why I don’t hug. The emotion’s hardly there.

He asked if I was doing fine. He asked if I was doing well. I answered. Lied. I didn’t want him to know that I had been born broken. That there were thoughts up in my head that weren’t supposed to be there. That I only did the things I did - the reason I read and wrote so much was to escape the world I was never meant for. Instead, I muttered a fine and explained my reason for being outside. The thorns, you see, brought comfort later on when I was alone and two or three were sticking into my flesh. The rush of ecstasy that flowed through me was almost orgasmic. I longed for it. It was my embittered medicine.

Three years later, my grandmother (Mom’s mom) died. I stood outside, again in the cold, at looked at the cactus patch. The thorns seemed smaller than I remembered, but I went to work anyway, plucking out only a few. The pain didn’t do what it normally did. It didn’t bring me the joy it has those three years ago. In fact, it only brought me a miserable sense of hatred.

I don’t cause pain to myself anymore because pain doesn’t work. Though now, I wish that cactus patch was still in the backyard.

We All Deserve to Die

I have been having this ongoing dream where I’m killing myself after killing some unknown person. I think my mental health is on a decline and I don’t trust myself around pills, plastic bags, razors, knives, anything that I can use to end myself. I hate being this weak. And while I’ve become kind of recluse by force, I’m thinking of going to this event on Saturday. I’m not sure how I’ll get there - this is where new friends should come in play. Sadly, I can’t make new friends because I lack that ability and chance. I’m not sure. I want to go because it’s something I’ve never done before, but am I only doing it because Jyg is living a new life without me? And what’s with this jealousy? Suddenly I’m looking at photos of her in short skirts and thinking that other guys are ogling her like they would a slut. My emotions are rampant. Something has snapped.

The fates are vicious and they’re cruel
You learn too late you’ve used
Two wishes
Like a fool

And then you’re someone you are not
And Junction City ain’t the spot
Remember Mrs. Lot and when she turned around
And if you’ve got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town

I think this sick city is eating me alive. I’m sure it is. It’s like a putrid cancer that latches to our minds/souls and sucks them drive. We are prisoners of our own private hell. Those of us who do go north wind up in Austin, where we just pollute it without ignorance and apathy. We are a horde of emotional vampires, or zombies, pick your choice. We won’t stop until everyone is just like us. And as long as I’ve known myself, I’ve known there are about two people in this world that I’ve met - the black holes and those of us who get sucked into their world. I’m afraid I’m becoming to believe I’m a dying star.

And soon I will devour everything there is to devour. And I’m sure that things will get better as they say, but when the only person who has ever made you felt normal no longer wants to deal with the shit that your life comes in store, then you feel that the rest of the world is worthless. And now I’m thinking what the point of living this life is because I can’t see it any longer.

I damned her earlier. I damned her for her confusion. Damned her for her drinking. Damned her for her friends. Damned her for all things that have befallen on me by her. And yet I cannot hate her, throw her out. I’m her slave, I’ve realized. The pathetic dog who waits around. I’ve hated the weak my whole life and now I’m one of them and I hate myself for it. If I could, I cut the very heart out of my chest and lay on the ground so that the world may stomp on it.

You think that luck has left you there
But maybe there’s nothing
Up in the sky but air

And there’s no mystical design
No cosmic lover preassigned
There’s nothing you can find
That cannot be found
’cause, with all the changes you’ve been through
It seems the stranger’s always you
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town

So what now? I’m not humanisticly suicidal, just off the wire, I suppose. For five years, I was balanced and now I’m like that circus act. One man upon a unicycle with a table upon his hand, glasses towering high and trying to stay balanced. Because when those glasses fall and shatter, I’m not sure what I am capable of doing.

They all deserve to die.
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.
Because in all of the whole human race
Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two
There’s the one staying put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one’s face
Look at me, Mrs Lovett, look at you.

No, we all deserve to die
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death will be a relief
We all deserve to die.

Sleep to be Awoken

My father, the man who never had a role in my life, the stranger in the crowd, a phantom of a man, was an alcoholic and, so, by natural psychology, I am at risk of being one. I don’t drink. Never have and I don’t want to. It’s the only goal in my life that I’ve the pleasure to announce I’ve kept. When I was a teen, I never wanted to drink illegally. As an adult, I am the sober man at the party, the loner, the unfunny one, lifeless and devoted to his sobriety. It shocks people to find this out. I’m sure some of you are staring at the screen with uplifted eyebrow questioning my honesty. In fact, the only alcohol I’ve consumed is always a part of a recipe, and never out of a bottle.

This probably puts a lot of people who have read my stories to question them. All my characters drink. They hang out at bars and grow drunk, hating society, becoming shadow men incapable of loving. They drink to regain a certain ease with themselves. To become happier than they have ever been. But it is fiction. The accounts of the characters are neither myself or anyone I know.

And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street for every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes cry and I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling “Make it go away!”
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered “How can you do this to me?”

I lost my cousin to his addiction to alcohol. New Year’s Eve 2003 I went to bed. I woke up in 2004 to hear from my mother my cousin was dead. The medics said he didn’t feel pain. That his neck was snapped the moment he collided with the object he crashed into. The wreck was so bad that his legs had to be amputated. He was cremated, his ashes somewhere, forgotten.

At times, I still find myself thinking he’s not dead. I never saw a body. Never seen the evidence of his death. When I see a chubby guy with a scruff beard, I still think he’s around. I think it’s the guilt of knowing that I was the one that expressed that he wasn’t welcomed in my mother’s home anymore. I wonder if things would be different had I not said that. Would he still be alive?

When Teddy died in 2001, I think I was a little distraught. No one I knew had ever died before, not a friend and never someone my own age. I was in my BCIS class when the announcement that Teddy had not made it. He’d been in a coma for some time and was struggling to live through. I think that was the first funeral I ever attended where I felt this coldness growing in me. From that moment on, I never wanted to be associated with the substance.

I canceled all my friends who were drunks. I promised never to grow to close to them. So when I found out my girlfriend at the time favored the drink, I was distraught. Despite the fact that we probably weren’t made for each other, the one thing that was a constant for me was her passion for the drink. I didn’t want to stand around and watch someone fall into that trap, confusing alcohol for happiness.

Addiction’s held you back
But you don’t care
Cause you’re on a high again
And it’s not fair
Consuming alcohol
While I gotta drive
Take a hit from the drugs you stole
And try to survive

Since your life was over
You haven’t yet been sober
You have held me back so long
Everything you do is wrong

My brother, the middle child, named after my father, following in his footsteps, is also an alcoholic. I’ve seen him in and out of the system since I was a kid. And while I love my brother, I have absolute no respect for him. He’s wasting his life on the bottle. He’s a rotting mess. It depresses me that I don’t know how to talk to him, or what I can say to make this disease leave his body.

And the saddest part of the story is that my brother is painfully aware of his condition but refuses to do anything about it. Alcoholism, like all addictions, is an ongoing battle between the alcoholic and the substance. I’m sure my brother feels like he’s losing his, which was made clear to me when he asked me to kick his ass if he was ever a bad father - he told me this at 7:00 am as he and his friend were still up drinking from the night before. I told him I didn’t have the time and I’ll deal with him after school.

You are one of God’s mistakes.
You crying, tragic waste of skin.
I’m well aware of how it aches,
And you still won’t let me in.
Now I’m breaking down your door,
To try and save your swollen face.
No, I don’t like you anymore
You lying, trying waste of space.

Now I sit here and stare at this screen thinking how I came to this point. After swearing never to care about people who might be headed down the path of a bad addiction, I find myself compelled to take care of a certain person. As I told this person, I don’t want to be up at night fearing that the phone call will be someone telling me of their death. I worry enough about my brother, I don’t need to worry more about someone else.

I just hope that this person seeks comfort in something else instead of drink. That drinking shouldn’t be for the buzz. This, of all things, is now bringing me closer the edge than I have before.

I tried to help you once
Against my own advice
I saw you going down
But you never realized
That you’re drowning in the water
So I offered you my hand
Compassions in my nature
Tonight is our last stand

I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And our scars remind us that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel

R.I.P. Gnosis

Gnosis, a cat I’ve had since the year that it snowed in the Rio Grande Valley, is dead. I found him under a resting spot in the front yard. It’s apparent that he fell asleep one last time before succumbing to his death. Gnosis is survived by his son, Bloo. He is preceded in death by his daughter Jean and the cat Snow Ball.

He was given to me by my friend, Philosopher.